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    Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State
    Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State
    Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State
    Ebook437 pages27 hours

    Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State

    By Andre Lecours

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    An examination of Basque nationalism from a historical perspective. Basque nationalism has been extensively examined from the perspectives of Basque culture and internal conditions in the Basque Country, but André Lecours is among the first to demonstrate how Basque nationalism was shaped by the many forms and historical phases of the Spanish state. His discussion employs one of the most debated approaches in the social sciences—historical institutionalism—and it includes an up-to-date examination of the circumstances for, and consequences of, recent events such as ETA's announcement in 2006 of a permanent cease-fire. Lecours also analyzes other aspects of Basque nationalism, including the international relations of the Basque Autonomous Government, as well as the responses of the contemporary Spanish state and how it deploys its own brand of nationalism. Finally, the book offers a comparative discussion of Basque, Catalan, Scottish, Flemish, and Quebecois nationalist movements, suggesting that nationalism in the Basque Country, despite the historical presence of violence, is in many ways similar to nationalism in other industrialized democracies. Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State is an original and provocative discussion that is essential reading for anyone interested in the Basques or in the development of modern nationalist movements.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Nevada Press
    Release dateJul 13, 2007
    ISBN9780874177312
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      Book preview

      Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State - Andre Lecours

      The Basque Series

      Basque Nationalism and the Spanish State

      ANDRÉ LECOURS

      University of Nevada Press

      Reno

      Las Vegas

      The Basque Series

      Copyright © 2007 by University of Nevada Press

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Library of Congress

      Cataloging-in Publication Data

      Lecours, André, 1972–

      Basque nationalism and the Spanish state / Andre Lecours.

      p. cm. — (The Basque series)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-87417-722-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

      1. Nationalism—Spain—País Vasco. 2. País Vasco (Spain)—Politics and government. 3. Spain—Politics and government. I. Title.

      DP302.B55L43 2007

        320.540946'6—dc22

      2007004973

      ISBN 978-0-87417-731-2 (ebook)

      For Natasha, Elizabeth, and Charles

      Contents

      List of Figures and Tables

      Preface:

      Acknowledgments

      Introduction

      Chapter One

      The Early Spanish State

      Chapter Two

      The Centralizing State

      Chapter Three

      The Authoritarian State

      Chapter Four

      The Democratic State

      Chapter Five

      Basque Paradiplomacy

      Chapter Six

      The Management of Basque Nationalism in Spain

      Chapter Seven

      Basque Nationalism in Comparative Perspective

      Conclusion

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Index

      Figures and Tables

      FIGURES

      4.1 - Attitudes of the Basques Toward ETA

      4.2 - View of the Problem of Violence in the Last Year (2005)

      6.1 - View of Ibarretxe’s Proposal in Light of New Circumstances

      7.1 - National Identities of the Basques

      7.2 - Preferences for Alternative State Forms

      TABLES

      3.1 - Results from Referendum on the Basque Statute of Autonomy, 1933

      3.2 - Electoral Results in the Basque Country, 1931

      3.3 - Electoral Results in the Basque Country, 1933

      3.4 - Electoral Results in the Basque Country, 1936

      4.1 - Results from Referendum on the Basque Statute of Autonomy, 1979

      4.2 - Basque Election Results in the Contemporary Democratic Period

      4.3 - Spanish Election Results in the Basque Country in the Contemporary Democratic period

      Preface

      Nationalism is a tricky research subject, because it is difficult to write about it without being categorized as either a sympathizer or a critic. This tendency to place tags on writers is understandable, because much of the literature on particular cases is outright political, in the sense of representing explicit support for the cause of a nationalist movement or clear denunciations of their activity, even existence. I found that this propensity for labeling authors as nationalist or antinationalist was particularly important in the Basque Country. This is hardly surprising considering the intensity of the conflict and the polarization of society over the political status of the Basque Country. In the study of Basque nationalism, as in nationalism studies in general, the line between politics and scholarship can be easily blurred. Some would say this is unavoidable and that a neutral treatment of nationalism and nationalist conflict is impossible. From this perspective, research on nationalism is always underpinned by a concern for either the plight of a stateless nation or for the integrity of the state and the unity of the nation it projects.

      I think that this issue of normative positioning can be largely avoided if one focuses on explaining the emergence and subsequent dynamics of nationalist movements. This is what I have tried to do in the first half of this book. I have used the tools of comparative politics, more specifically historical institutionalism, to present a state-centered argument about the development of Basque nationalism. The primary purpose of this book, therefore, is not to put forward a normative judgement about Basque nationalism or to engage in a political debate about the merits of its claims. Rather, the idea is to make a theoretical contribution to the study of nationalism by using the Basque case.

      At the same time, I did not want to pass up the opportunity to analyze important political developments in the Basque Country such as the development by the Basque government of international relations (paradiplomacy), the presentation by Basque lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe of a proposal for the restructuring of the relationship between the Basque Country and the Spanish state, and the announcement by ETA in 2006 of a permanent cease-fire. Since this task involves delving into the intricacies of Basque politics, one could argue that it is more difficult to be neutral and objective. Still, my objective in discussing these processes and events is to be analytical rather than polemical, that is, to provide a fair assessment of their causes, meaning, and potential consequence. This is where, I think, being an outsider can be useful, because I have no emotional attachment to one side or the other, nor do I have a stake of any kind in political outcomes.

      Finally, I also take a chapter in this book to place Basque nationalism in comparative perspective. Here again, my objective is not to show that the Basque nationalist movement is better or worse than others in Western societies. Rather, I am looking to demystify nationalism in the Basque Country and make the point that the presence of political violence for most of the democratic period does not mean that Basque nationalism is fundamentally different from Catalan, Scottish, Quebecois, or Flemish nationalism. There is a pattern to the politics of substate nationalism in Western societies (in terms of structure, claims, discourse, arguments, and so forth) that seems to cut across the specifics of a case.

      In sum, I hope this book represents a contribution to the field of nationalism studies that combines a theoretical purpose with the rich analysis of a fascinating case.

      Acknowledgments

      Research for this book was conducted in the Basque Country as well as in the Basque Studies Library at the University of Nevada, Reno. I would like to thank Noé Cornago Prieto, in the Basque Country, for his help and William A. Douglass, in Reno, for informative conversations. I want to thank Claire Delisle and Peter Nasr for their research assistance and the two anonymous reviewers for their useful advice. Special thanks to Luis Moreno for having commented on the manuscript.

      I drew much inspiration in thinking about the relationship between state and substate nationalism from my work in the Research Group on Plurinational Societies led by Alain-G. Gagnon at Université du Québec à Montréal.

      Introduction

      Substate Nationalism, Historical Institutionalism, and the Basque Country

      Es la realidad del País. This is a statement I heard more than once when conducting research on Basque nationalism in the Basque Country. It conveys a sense of resignation about the deep polarization of Basque politics and society that has accompanied the expression of Basque nationalism in the democratic period. Basque nationalism questions with tremendous strength and pugnacity the legitimacy of the Spanish state’s rule in the Basque Country and the idea of a Spanish nation. This is most obvious in the politics of the radical stream of Basque nationalism whose flagship organization ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) was, until its declaration of a permanent cease-fire in March 2006, committed to using violence in an attempt to achieve the independence of the Basque Country. The moderate nationalists of the PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) have challenged the Spanish state in their own way while staying clear of formally supporting political violence. The PNV has been consistent in claiming that the Basques have a right to self-determination. This right would suppose that the Basque population alone can decide if the Basque Country remains part of Spain, becomes independent, or adopts some other type of political status. In this spirit, Basque lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe put forward a proposal for a Statute of Free Association between the Basque Country and Spain.

      The position of the central government toward Basque nationalism was uncompromising during the second mandate of the Partido Popular (PP) (2000–2004). After the 2000 elections, when it won an absolute majority in the Congress of Deputies, the PP took a hard line toward both radical and moderate Basque nationalists. It pursued a policing rather than a political strategy toward ETA, whose violence it considered a form of criminality. For example, the PP supported 2002 and 2003 court orders to outlaw Batasuna, the radical nationalist party with close links with ETA, and shut down the Basque-language daily Egunkaria. In reaction to the Ibarretxe proposal of a free association, the PP government made it illegal to hold referendums that could compromise the political and territorial integrity of Spain.¹ The consequence of all these decisions was to aggravate the polarization between Basque nationalists, who typically seek more autonomy or independence for the Basque Country, and non-Basque nationalists, who defend the status quo.² Between 2000 and 2004, the political climate in the Basque Country was the most volatile and tense it had been since the end of the dictatorship. The election of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) in the spring of 2004 improved the atmosphere, as the new socialist government stated it was open to a dialogue with the Basque government about political and institutional reform.³ ETA’s declaration of a permanent cease-fire in 2006 opened up more opportunities for change.

      The contemporary political situation in the Basque Country is the product of a process, the development of Basque nationalism, that has been unfolding for a century but whose structural roots are much older. How did Basque nationalism emerge? How did it gain such significant popular support? Why does it feature a radical stream, which until recently tolerated violence? Why is contemporary Basque politics permeated by the national question? In other words, why is Basque politics to a large extent nationalist politics? These are questions guiding this book as it develops, in chapters 1–4, a historical institutionalist perspective on Basque nationalism. There is a considerable literature on Basque nationalism, some of which examines these types of questions. Authors have insisted on many different factors when analyzing Basque nationalism: culture, political economy, elite behavior, foral autonomy, state centralization, dictatorial rule, and others. This study does not have the pretension to invoke brand new explanatory factors for Basque nationalism; rather, it seeks to develop a historical state-centric perspective that considers the rise of nationalism in the Basque Country to be inextricably linked to the development of Spanish nationalism. The main argument is that Basque nationalism should be understood in relation to state- and nation-building in the Iberian Peninsula. The book suggests that Basque nationalism is the product of a historical trajectory that saw the Spanish state assume four different forms in its relation with the Basque provinces/Country: confederal-like (up to the nineteenth century); centralizing (in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries); authoritarian (the Primo de Rivera and Franco dictatorships); and democratic with the Estado de las Autonomías (since 1978).

      The specific argument is the following. The Spanish state did not engage in nation-building until very late in the nineteenth century, which allowed for the crystallization of non-Spanish identities in the Basque provinces. When some efforts at national integration were made in the late 1800s, they were half-hearted and ultimately unsuccessful because the state, although centralizing, was too weak and sending conflicting images of the Spanish nation. This failure to nationalize the masses as well as the traditional landholding elites in the Basque provinces meant that attachment to nations other than Spain could be engineered. This is what happened when the traditional elite of the Basque province of Bizkaia challenged state centralization by spearheading a Basque nationalist movement. In the context of the twentieth-century authoritarian state, Spanish nationalism was discredited by the brutal policies of Franco, while Basque nationalism became associated with freedom and democracy. The structures of the democratic state allowed for the political expression of Basque nationalism while also rehabilitating, for a substantial segment of Basque society, the idea of a Spanish nation. This duality of national attachments explains nationalist conflicts in the Basque Country.

      The argument for a state-centric perspective on Basque nationalism is made drawing from historical institutionalism. This approach offers a historical quality to political analysis that, combined with the theoretical importance given to political institutions, brings a focus to the temporal articulation of state forms and its effect on agency, preferences, strategies, identities, and the overall organization of politics. From a historical institutionalist perspective, the various historical forms of the Spanish state represent critical junctures for Basque nationalism insofar as the succession of these forms narrowed to nationalist conflict the developmental pathway of Basque politics through specific patterns of interaction with (depending on the historical period) Basque elites, political parties, ETA, and the larger civil society.

      This book uses the historical institutionalist framework to conduct a single case study of nationalism, the Basque Country. In this context, it is difficult to put forward generalizations, especially since the Spanish state, with its multiple and clearly delineated state forms, lends itself particularly well to a historical institutionalist analysis and its preferred methodological strategy of periodization. Nevertheless, the Basque Country serves as a case that can hint at the usefulness of historical institutionalism for shedding light on substate nationalism. The analysis of Basque nationalism presented in this study may not offer an exact template for conducting other case studies (the historical trajectories of states and their nations being too different from one to another), but it is intended to suggest historical institutionalism as a framework for thinking about the development of nationalist movements.

      In addition to examining Basque nationalism through a historical institutionalist framework, this book offers analytical and comparative perspectives on the Basque nationalist movement. The last three substantive chapters proceed with a logic different from the first four insofar as they focus on specific political dynamics stemming from Basque nationalism. First, nationalism has meant that Basque governments have aggressively pursued networks, strategies, and policies of international action. The substantial and multidimensional paradiplomacy found in the Basque Country is not exclusive to this case, and a strong argument can be made that substate nationalism is functionally related to nationalism. Also, the existence of the Basque nationalist movement has required the democratic Spanish state to devise political and institutional management approaches and strategies. Its system of autonomous communities that decentralized power following a federal logic became the centerpiece of an accommodation strategy, while the deployment of a liberal, democratic, and constitutionally grounded Spanish nationalism was aimed at gaining the loyalty of the Basques. The recent proposal of Basque lehendakari Ibarretxe suggests a redesign of the political and institutional arrangements of 1978. Finally, Basque nationalism is a differentiated phenomenon, featuring various and contrasted ideologies, that has been engaged by the processes of globalization, including continental integration. These political dynamics are not unique to the Basque case and can be compared to those of other nationalist movements in Western societies.

      These contributions seek to fill gaps in the literature on Basque nationalism. Basque paradiplomacy has not been significantly documented and analyzed in English. Discussions about the management of Basque nationalism are typically limited to a description of the Estado de las Autonomías. They usually ignore Spanish nationalism as a central process aimed at solving the Basque problem, and treatments of the Ibarretxe proposal in English are rare. Finally, comparative works featuring the Basque case are also fairly rare despite the fact that, apart from political violence, nationalist politics in the Basque Country have much in common with nationalist politics in Cataluña, Quebec, Scotland, and Flanders.

      Basque Nationalism: A Literature Overview

      There is a substantial literature on Basque nationalism, especially if one considers studies on Basque culture, tradition, language, and literature that generally fall under the heading of Basque studies.⁴ The focus of this section is on works specifically on nationalism rather than on culture in the broader sense, or on the diaspora.⁵ The objective is not to offer a comprehensive review of the literature, but rather to provide an assessment of how this literature is structured and where the present contribution fits in.

      A first type of work on Basque nationalism is the historical narrative. Its focus is on recounting in great detail the history of the Basques, the rise of Basque nationalism, and its struggle during the Franco dictatorship. Many of these books give great attention to the role of Sabino Arana in articulating Basque nationalism.⁶ Others focus on post-Arana periods.⁷ The degree of analysis contained in these types of monographs varies greatly: a particularly good author is José Luis de la Granja Sainz, whose El nacionalismo vasco: Un siglo de historia provides a most insightful examination of the development of Basque nationalism.⁸ The perspective also varies. Some authors offer nationalist accounts of Basque nationalism insofar as they present the Basque nation more or less as an organic reality that has persisted throughout history, most often in hostile conditions.⁹ Others have told the story without the Basque nationalist slant, or as some have said, from an antinationalist perspective.¹⁰ The Spanish state is always there somewhere in these histories. In the writing of Basque nationalists, it is typically portrayed as a source of oppression and therefore largely negatively. For scholars adopting a Spanish perspective, substate nationalism is negatively perceived because it prevents the complete integration of Spain. In none of these literatures are the macroprocesses of state- and nation-building at the center of a coherent theoretical explanation for the development of Basque nationalism. In fact, these historical studies are not informed by explicit theoretical frameworks; they are meant to be detailed narratives, rather than parsimonious explanations or thick descriptions of Basque nationalism.

      A second focus for scholars working on Basque nationalism has been ETA and political violence. Many authors have detailed the birth of ETA, its ideological struggles, tactical dilemmas, and so on.¹¹ Others, such as Robert P. Clark and Ludger Mees, have tackled ETA and political violence from a conflict resolution perspective.¹² Another research angle has been to look at the counteroffensive of the Spanish and French states.¹³ From a more anthropological perspective, scholars such as Joseba Zulaika and Begoña Aretxaga have written about the various meanings and social consequences of violence stemming from ETA or the radical Basque youths involved in street fighting (kale borroka).¹⁴ The focus on political violence has also led to very insightful research about the broader radical nationalist community.¹⁵ Indeed, current work on ETA is considerably enhancing our understanding of Basque nationalism by investigating the social foundations of violence.

      Another research focus has been the politics of Basque nationalism during the transition and the construction of the Basque Statute of Autonomy.¹⁶ In his Conflicto en Euskadi, published in 1986, Juan Linz predicted that the PNV’s ambiguous position toward the new constitution and the Estado de las Autonomías meant that the Spanish state would remain a contested presence in the Basque Country.¹⁷ Many other good studies have tied the history of Basque nationalism to contemporary manifestations while making specific arguments about the peculiarity of Basque nationalism. For example, Barbara Loyer has emphasized the great diversity of positions toward Spain within the Basque Country, while Cyrus Zirakzadeh has provided an account of Basque nationalist politics in reference to class and economic structures.¹⁸ Basque nationalism has also been discussed in the larger context of territorial and nationalist politics in Spain. Let us mention here the work of Luis Moreno on the federalization of the Spanish state.¹⁹

      Some of the most interesting and theoretically informed work on Basque nationalism has featured comparisons with other nationalist movements. Cataluña has been a favorite case.²⁰ Daniele Conversi has put forth the intriguing argument that violence is a feature of Basque nationalism because Basque society lacks the functional common language found in Cataluña.²¹ Juan Díez Medrano has suggested that different patterns of economic development are at the heart of the distinct development processes of Basque and Catalan nationalism.²² Another case used quite often to structure comparisons with the Basque Country is Northern Ireland.²³ Here, an interesting contribution comes from Cynthia Irvin, who has looked to explain, using interviews with Sinn Féin and Batasuna militants, why radical nationalists sometimes accept to play the game of electoral politics.²⁴ A slightly different approach is taken by Jan Mansvelt Beck who is one of the rare scholars of Basque nationalism sensitive to explaining the strength in Spain and weakness in France.²⁵ Finally, there are also larger comparative works that include discussions of the Basque Country. For example, Michael Keating has argued that nationalist movements in the West typically adopt a post-sovereignty view of the world; they do not look for straight secession but rather attempt to secure a political status that would provide their community with extensive autonomy while retaining links with the central state.²⁶

      To reiterate, this comment on the literature is not meant to provide a comprehensive review of everything written on Basque nationalism,²⁷ but rather to get a sense of what types of contributions have been made. Discussions and analyses of Basque nationalism typically involve some mention of the Spanish state. This book seeks to go further by developing a state-centric perspective on Basque nationalism that explicitly takes the historical articulation of the various forms of the Spanish state and their particular expressions (or lack thereof) of a Spanish nation as central theoretical determinants. Before considering historical institutionalism as the most adequate framework for such a task, I now examine different theories and understandings of nationalism.

      Theories of Nationalism

      The central debate in the field of nationalism has arguably been between modernist and primordialist (or perennialist) understandings of the phenomenon.²⁸ These positions used to be quite crudely laid out. Modernists argued that the nation was a European invention created by processes of modernization and state centralization during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They suggested that the emergence of nationalism was a functional necessity since industrial capitalist societies could only operate in the context of cultural homogeneity.²⁹ In other words, modernity required political, institutional, economic, and cultural integration and, therefore, the construction of genuine nation-states. From this perspective, nations do not have ancient histories. In fact, all history before the seventeenth century is irrelevant for understanding nations and nationalism, as well as all non-European history before the nation-state model was exported by colonial powers. A key modernist idea is that nations do not have an organic nature but rather are constructed. From this perspective, nationalism creates nations, not the other way around.³⁰

      Primordialists, as they were called in the 1970s and the 1980s, argued that nations were naturally occurring sociocultural groups whose members felt a bond with one another stronger than any other type of ties they could experience. Some primordialist scholars sought to make the link between nationalism and genetics,³¹ but most suggested that nations were the inevitable consequence of cultural diversity. Cultural markers, sometimes referred to as basic ties,³² were said to be powerful in and of themselves.³³ These markers were seen as constitutive of a type of group identity, that is, national or ethnic identity, more fundamental and more primordial than identities deriving from class, gender, or other cleavages. Primordialism gave a sense of naturalness to the nation that derived not from functional but rather psychological needs. It held that nations were very ancient communities, not necessarily European in origins or nature, whose existence was buried in history. From this angle, nations generate nationalism.³⁴

      In the last fifteen years, there has been a considerable rapprochement between the modernist and primordialist positions. Sharp criticisms, from both sides, have hit the mark. Perhaps most obvious is the change in discourse from those closest to the primordialist tradition as well as a change of name: virtually no scholar of nationalism accepts the tag of primordialist today, even if their research focuses on the impact of culture on national identity and mobilization. The preferred label is perennialist or ethno-symbolist. Both perennialists and ethno-symbolists readily speak of nations as constructs.³⁵ Gone are the ideas that nations are givens of social existence and that their foremost characteristic is some form of mystic primordialism. Perennialists and ethno-symbolists acknowledge the importance of state-building for nations, although they do not agree with the modernist idea that nations were built from scratch by modernizing states. Instead, they suggest that state modernization represents an important, if not decisive, process in the development of nations. They do maintain, however, that this development usually began before the modernization process or, in other words, that the genesis of nations typically precedes industrialization as well as political and institutional integration. Ethno-symbolists stress most particularly the importance of the construction of narratives and symbols in explaining the power of nationalism.

      Modernists have also had to respond to difficult objections to their theory of nationalism. Critics argued that the modernist paradigm could not capture the emotional and volatile character of nationalism. Modernists responded to this criticism by saying that they were well aware of the power of symbols and myths; however, there seems to be little room in their approach for incorporating this type of factor. Perhaps most important were charges of Eurocentrism and ahistoricalness. Modernists, drawing primarily from European empirical material, denied much of the history of non-European societies or, at least, could not make room for the possibility that there existed national identities or communities before contact with the Europeans. For instance, responses to strongly voiced claims that aboriginal populations in the Americas adopted nationlike forms of organization before colonization can only play on the issue of scale, that is, on the idea that nations are communities where most members never have face-to-face relations. Other troublesome cases, such as ancient Greece, Armenia, or Israel, have been thrown at the modernists, who have tended to remain more steadfast in their argument than perennialists. Nevertheless, it is clear that the perennialist critique has had its effect on the literature on nationalism. Whereas in the 1980s modernists seemed to have won the battle of paradigms, the 1990s featured a renaissance of much-lauded perennialist work.³⁶ And that is without counting an abundance of poststructuralist and feminist works that do not fit very well within the modernist paradigm.³⁷

      In short, there seems to have been a fruitful dialogue among specialists of nationalism, although there certainly has not been a synthesis of the modernist and perennialist paradigms. Ethno-symbolism has become, to an extent, the meeting point of these two traditions in nationalism studies. Placing a specific tag on the conception of nationalism informing this study of the Basque case is not easy. However, my understanding of nationalism is closer to the modernist perspective: it stresses the state, does not place decisive importance on cultural variables, and believes in the construction of nations in the most profound and theoretically meaningful sense. I do, however, take exception to the ahistorical character of the modernist perspective. It is one thing to argue that nations did not exist before the seventeenth century, but quite another to say that nothing that happened previously mattered for the construction of nations. This book makes the claim that a genuine historical approach is important and that such an approach must pay close attention to the process of state development. The modernist and perennialist perspectives have often been erected as polar opposites, and, as a consequence, the state and history have, strangely enough, often been viewed as antithetical in the study of nationalism: modernists focused on the state but began their investigation in the seventeenth century, whereas perennialists made greater use of history while marginalizing the state. The approach taken in this book is that the history of the state is of foremost importance for understanding nationalism, and that in many cases the genesis of state construction, which often goes back several centuries, is central to explaining contemporary nationalism even if its emergence is relatively recent.

      Above and beyond the debate over the broader nature of nationalism, there are also disagreements about which specific factors are most important in its development. There are a variety of ways to categorize theories of nationalism. For the purpose of the current review, I adopt a fairly conventional typology and distinguish between cultural, economic, political, and macrostructural approaches.

      Cultural theories focus on the formative role of cultural markers such as language or religion in the development of national identities and communities. From this perspective, there is not much emphasis on nationalist politics in the sense of mobilization and competition. Rather, the identities stemming from cultural markers are viewed more or less as naturally permeating the political realm. This was very much the position of the early primordialists.³⁸ In this tradition, the link between culture and nationalism is very straightforward: cultural markers unite and divide human populations; they delineate groups and forge the most basic and fundamental ties of collective identity.

      Another group of scholars that has developed cultural theories of nationalism comes from political philosophy. Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, and others have sought to develop an alternative view to classical liberal theory that, they argue, conceptualizes human beings in isolation from their sociocultural environment.³⁹ These scholars suggest that human agency is always informed by cultural considerations. They argue that culture, and more specifically language, has a natural subjective meaning and that it generates collective identities that fulfill a need to belong. From this angle, these identities are bound to have political consequences in the form of claims for recognition, autonomy, or independence. This type of cultural perspective on nationalism suggests that most societies are permeated by an irreducible diversity. It typically informs the writings of nationalist scholars⁴⁰ as well as researchers who are pessimistic about the long-term survival of multiethnic and multinational states and the peaceful coexistence of their populations.⁴¹ To this group, we could also add consociational theorists who put a positive spin on cultural diversity and argue that political leaders should not look to transcend it, but rather use it to build stable democracies.⁴²

      These cultural approaches lack the historical perspective necessary to understand long-term processes such as identity construction and the building up of nationalist mobilization. In fact, I would argue that these approaches consider identities and mobilization largely as givens, and that their existence does not seem to be the product of a process. Here, culture is overwhelming, and nationalism is, at the constitutive level, almost apolitical and asocial.⁴³ As a consequence, the state does not factor into the explanation for nationalism; rather, it is seen exclusively as a reflection of a society’s cultural composition, or as an instrument that can be used for the management of diversity and nationalist conflict.

      Perennialism and ethno-symbolism can also be considered cultural theories of nationalism insofar as they locate the origins of nations in premodern cultures.⁴⁴ These perspectives are historical and not limited to cultural considerations; they view the emergence of nations as a process involving cultural, social, political, ideological, technological, and other forces. The state is present here, but mostly in its centralizing and modernizing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century forms; this is a point taken from the modernist perspective. Perennialism and ethno-symbolism are certainly richer approaches than the old primordialism, but they still give theoretical primacy to cultural factors.⁴⁵ Cultural theories are not the best suited for explaining Basque nationalism. After all, there is a similar Basque culture in both Spain and France, but only in the former is there a strong nationalist movement.⁴⁶ Of course, it is not unimportant that the Basques are a population with unique cultural, linguistic, and, some have even said, physical characteristics; however, these cultural features are relevant for an understanding of Basque nationalism only insofar as they are connected to political and institutional considerations. For

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